“I just got such sh-t from my family for my big mouth again,” Simmons, 66, tweeted late Tuesday night. “I apologize — I have a long history of getting very angry at what drugs do to the families/friends of the addicts. I get angry at drug users because of my experience being around them coming up in the rock scene.”

“In my experience they’ve made my life, and the lives of their loves ones, difficult,” Simmons continued in his apology. “I was raised in a culture/crowd where drugs addicts were written off as losers, and since that the narrative I grew up with, it’s been hard to change with the times.”

In a Newsweek interview, the KISS frontman put his feelings on Prince’s death bluntly: “[H]ow pathetic that he killed himself,” Simmons said. “Don’t kid yourself, that’s what he did. Slowly, I’ll grant you … but that’s what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death.”

That statement caused a backlash from fans and critics.

“Needless to say, I didn’t express myself myself properly here — I don’t shy away from controversy, and angry critics really don’t bother me at all,” he added in his lengthly apology. “If I think I’m right, I’ll throw up a finger and dig my heels in and laugh. But this time, I was not. So, my apologies.”